Mindway AI has appointed Will Mace as head of strategic programmes, tasking him with leading a major research initiative into effective player harm interventions.
The AI-led supplier has long argued that the industry’s attempts to tackle harmful gambling have fallen short, particularly when it comes to acting on identified risk.
Mace, formerly group player safety director at evoke, brings nearly two decades of operational, regulatory, and clinical experience to his new role.
Mindway AI CEO Rasmus Kjaergaard praised the appointment, saying Will Mace’s “phenomenal track record across major operators, regulatory working groups, and clinical support networks gives us the perfect blend of insight to build a full-service safer gambling ecosystem.”
Mace himself expressed enthusiasm for the challenge, stating: “I have long admired the team at Mindway AI and am very excited to start working with them on this fascinating and important initiative.”
The company is aiming to essentially “write the book” on what constitutes a genuinely effective intervention when a player has been identified as being at risk.
Mace warned that poorly designed interactions can actively make the situation worse, telling NEXT.io: “An interaction that just pushes a customer elsewhere is clearly counter-productive – from the vulnerable customers perspective and the operators perspective.”
He elaborated on the ambition behind the research, adding: “We plan to go much further and develop really actionable research that points to the most effective interaction type and content for any given risk scenario.”
Before joining Mindway, Mace served for nine years in the British Army and is a co-founder of the Armed Forces Gambling Support Network, earning him a reputation as an industry pioneer in safer gambling circles.
He spent nearly six years at Kindred Group, where his role involved growing the Kindred Futures programme to explore innovative investment opportunities in the responsible gambling space.
In 2019, Mace founded EQ-Connect, a business built around the concept of cross-operator customer profiles, ensuring players are monitored holistically across all accounts they hold with different operators.
That concept has since been adopted through the GamProtect Single Customer View project, on which Mace served as a board member and part of the industry steering committee as a representative of evoke.
Cross-operator data sharing is gaining traction beyond the UK as well, with Spain having recently introduced new cross-operator deposit limits through a royal decree.
Mindway AI’s own announcement noted that current academic research on interaction efficacy “remains sparse, and few competitive market solutions exist,” underlining the scale of the gap the initiative intends to fill.
The company argues that risk identification, while critical, “has historically dominated the safer gambling narrative” and “represents only half of the equation,” with effective intervention being equally important.
Mace agreed that research in this area is “limited” and that establishing a rigorous, evidence-led framework for player interactions is long overdue across the industry.
UK regulation is itself part of the problem, according to Mace, who told NEXT.io: “It currently requires an operator to ‘refuse service or end the business relationship’ when the signs of risk are strong. This almost certainly means the customer is just pushed elsewhere, rather than being supported.”
Mindway’s GameScanner technology, which combines AI and human assessment as a virtual psychologist for early detection of problematic behaviour, is central to the company’s plans for overcoming this challenge.
Kjaergaard summed up the company’s mission clearly, stating: “Identifying harm is a technical triumph we have mastered with GameScanner, but identification is only as good as the interactions and intervention that follows. Operators are crying out for a scientific, measurable way to interact with players effectively.”
